


half-half

by redundant



Series: processing my feelings about tlj [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Kylo Ren Angst, Kylo Ren Needs a Hug, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers, i love how these are already tags, if you haven't watched it please please do, metaphors! lightsabers! run on sentences! angst! this fic has it all
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-15
Updated: 2017-12-15
Packaged: 2019-02-15 00:11:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 768
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13019160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redundant/pseuds/redundant
Summary: Ben takes the light and splits Snoke clean in two.





	half-half

Ben takes the light and splits Snoke clean in two.

  


There is fighting, after that. There always is. He should be used to it, but it’s a little different seeing things from the other end of the Order’s blade. The walls turn from red to clear, and he and Rey are surrounded by the fire, falling gentle and slow, and the corpses, and the stars. Everything is crumbling away. Ben’s hand is tiny against all of it. He holds it out still.

She is the one solid thing in the room, her shoulders straight, her posture sure. She is the one solid thing, and he is reaching for her while he still can.

“Come with me,” he asks her.

In the seconds that follow, the quiet, he looks at her and he knows her choice is already made. The dark is not the only thing halved that day, but a lightsaber too, and she takes both pieces with her.

  


He explains the rubble and the fallen bodies and Snoke, lying small and graceless in death, as the girl’s fault. He talks. His words fall mumbled, heavy, useless even to his own ears. There is disbelief on Hux’s face, painted clear as the scar that splits his own cheek. Ben destroyed his mask (and the side of a ship) and left the remains, charred and smoking, behind him. Kylo feels it growing back now.

He thinks, briefly, of Rey in that- in that place. The darkness. A tiny infinity of her, stretching out one by one by one; the quiet rustling _snapsnapsnap_ of hundreds of clicked fingers. A hand, reaching out to a mirror. That same hand throwing him a lightsaber, that same hand reaching out to him across a galaxy. She was the only thing he could see, then- everything else was fuzzy, but she was not. She made him feel solid, too. Safe. It’s insane and inane and thousands of other adjectives that fall flat on Ben’s ears, but she made the quiet come back in a world that was always screaming.

And now she is gone.

  


(His lightsaber spits out an angry red and thrums under his hands with strain- it is constantly on the verge of blowing itself apart. Hers was steady. Its beam was straight and sure and true, when it came down to it.

It was the light, and Ben felt it calling him, and Ben used it to kill Snoke and now Kylo has to deal with the consequences.)

  


Skywalker appears. Kylo feels his world narrow down to the man and the shadow he casts behind him, and Ben might be screaming but he is not. He is not a child anymore. (Ben is.) He is not a scared, pathetic _child_ and now he has the power to kill the past and he is going to use it, burn it out of himself, dig it out like a spearhead from a wound. Blast it into oblivion.

(“More,” he says. More, more, more, and Ben knows it will never be enough, but Ben is not Kylo and Kylo is not a child anymore and there is something built into his bones that makes him sit forward, makes him watch, makes him itch to burn Skywalker into the fucking ground.)

“Do you think you got him, then,” Hux says, quiet. Vicious. Kylo is numb. (Ben is not.) The red is risen on the salt plains in front of them and he leans forward, tries to remember how to breathe.

  


(Kylo wanted to take the final shot, the one that would destroy the ship and everyone on it. Destroy the past. Let it go.

Ben moved the trigger finger, and there was heat prickling at the backs of his eyes, and Kylo felt nothing and Ben felt far, far too much.)

  


Kylo uses his lightsaber to kill Skywalker, and the beam is angry and hissing and spitting and- useless. He tries again, and it runs clean through, but he cannot burn what is not there.

Now it is Kylo who is screaming and Ben who is calm.

(His choice is not yet made.)

Skywalker calls him Ben, but he is talking to Kylo. (His choice is not yet made.) Skywalker is not the last Jedi. (His choice is not yet made.) There will be hope in the galaxy (his choice is not yet made he still has an out and he can find Rey and they can make it out of here and he can breathe-)

  


There are three things that are halved. Snoke, a lightsaber, and a boy whose choice is not yet made.

**Author's Note:**

> this was written extremely quickly as is probably evident by- well. everything.  
> kudos/comments are highly appreciated, and if you wanna scream about tlj at me, please feel free because i've been screaming internally ever since i got back from watching it and i look a little deranged on my own. love you bye <3


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